When is enough enough?

[Zandalariprelate]

BfA sold more day one copies than any other expansion, so why would they let him go?

Always wondered why, Wotlk has Arthas and Legion was fanservice which sells very well with the playerbase

[trapmaster]

I gonna be honest that is actually a dick move. Really dick move coming from company cutting off ppl over for money. I'm betting this greed is their priority number one. I don't really see their excuses, it's a desperate move greed.

[kendro1200]

When people start to understand that in a company with almost 10 000 of employees layoffs is a natural thing when sales go down.

Except sales aren't down, they were just flat (who knows, maybe January is going to be really rough). Acti-Bliz has lost huge amounts of consumer faith due to predatory practices, poor QA and delivering poor products. Setting themselves up to be understaffed to handle future products is only going to make the matter worse.

Also, dumping employees because of a rough quarter is not "a natural thing" for any company. Layoffs after a bad year is natural, especially with the amount of liquidity Acti-Blizz has. Layoffs should always be the last resort to ensure the health of a company, because when you recover afterwards and need to rehire then you have to go through growing pains as you retrain the replacements. Not to mention layoffs are an incredibly huge hit for moral and will cause most employees to start looking for new jobs, and if they happen to find something and get an offer that is better than their current position, then they'll leave. That then leaves the employer with fewer people than what they had originally hoped to have. The employees that you have left will then go in one of two directions: try to work harder to try and keep their jobs, or care less about their work because they've seen the signs that the ship is sinking regardless of what they do.
These layoffs are kneejerk reactions to tanking stocks. Despite what people may think, investors do research the public image and consumer opinion of what they invest in. So with all of the bad publicity that Acti-Blizz has gotten since September has started to pile up, when coupled with sales meeting below expectations, shows the investors that the company is out of touch with the market and is not worth the investment anymore.

[Tomana]

WOLTK BETTER THAN BFA hahahhaah. Guys we found the nostalgic casual. Oh my god

I raided hardcore during WOLTK, so as usual, your pathetic attempt at sarcasm fails miserably.
And yes, WOTLK was better than BFA by a huge margin. The class design was miles better, we had flying and we had Ulduar and ICC.

[RobertMugabe]

Always wondered why, Wotlk has Arthas and Legion was fanservice which sells very well with the playerbase

BfA sold more on day one, because you could preorder it for a much longer time than any expansion. They've also had a special event with a live Q&A for the reveal of the preorder AND you were able to unlock 4 new races right away if you preordered. Considering all that, I wouldn't call this a huge success that BfA just barely outsold Legion on day one.

Either way, day one sales don't matter this much. Blizzard makes the most money through subs.

[Darsithis]

Look, this has little to do with "white-knighting".

I still enjoy playing WoW. That's why I play it. That's not a white-knighting, and I'm not going to quit playing because Activision is showing lower revenue and is restructuring. I don't base my decisions to consume content and entertainment on how much money the provider is making and how many employees they have.

[Asrialol]

It always bothers me that Blizzard is seen as some sort of Angel like coorporation. Whenever somethign bad happens to Blizzard (like the announcement of Diablo Immortal), it's always Activisons fault - never Blizzards.

Lootboxes are the worst thing that ever happened to the gaming industry and many, many titles have them (despite the full price). And now let's get back to Blizzard. Who invented that loot box bullshit? Yep, Blizzard did. Not EA. No Activison. Not Bethesda. Not any other company that gamers love to to hate. It was Blizzard.

Blizzard didn't invent microtransactions. I believe EA did, back in.. 2007 or so?

- - - Updated - - -

Well, if you learned how to count on your fingers at school, then you have WOTLK, MOP and Legion being much better than BFA.
Yes, each of these packs had its share of problems, but nowhere as significant as BFA. So, BFA is at best 4th, and most likely 5th, just before the even bigger pile of horse manure called WOD. And even about that I'm not sure - at least WOD allowed me to get massive amounts of gold in garrisons.

He said in terms of content. BFA has more than wrath or mop did when they were at their first major content patch.

[Weeps]

To have a successful MMORPG game, you need to have huge numbers.

Dwindling numbers doesn't help the players who love the MMO they play. This is just basic common sense.

Raiding guilds are fighting really hard to keep a solid and sustained roster for BfA.

I've learned that for BfA, I'm just going to do all the content for the patch that was released then unsub until the next patch. I've never done this in all of my years of playing WoW, unsubbing until the next patch. I am not "quitting" I just... have no reason to log on. At all.

[Tomana]

He said in terms of content. BFA has more than wrath or mop did when they were at their first major content patch.

Your experience may vary, but MOP release kept me busier than BFA release just with the all the reps, not to mention other stuff.

[Scottyjscizzle]

I don't think that anyone knows how Blizzard will be affected. We'll find out on Tuesday. What Bloomberg is reporting about is much, much bigger than just WoW. In fact it's much bigger than just Blizzard Entertainment or ATVI. The problems cut across the entire industry which appears to be pulling back for a messy 2019.

You may see some developers laid off. You may not. It's possible that a lot of sales, support and management staff will be pulled into Activision HQ. That's what restructuring and consolidation is after all.

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Hard to understand what IP's they would build mobile games on if they sell their IP's to EA. Try and be coherent.

The ones they keep in the "activision is teh evil!!!" hyperbole land. I don't like what activision does, but gaming sites be it mmo-c, reddit, etc are full of so many gaming-chair economy majors its hilarious.

[Razzako]

His ass


People acting surprised when a company with 10k employees and flat sales has to layoff a few hundred people

I use to work for an international company and they would have layoffs every summer. We would call it "the culling". This shit just happens.

Yeah it happens and it sucks. The selling IPs part caught my eye though because I haven't seen that anywhere and thought I might've been out of the loop for a sec, not surprised it's bullshit.

[Onikaroshi]

He said in terms of content. BFA has more than wrath or mop did when they were at their first major content patch.

Doesn't matter how much quantity of content there is if the quality of it is crap

[Blayze]

You know what's not sustainable? Giving out swords and shields and shit like that.

[Nathasil]

Hearthstone - Game that pretends to have a lore background but does not actually use it for anything, in stead we have short PvP matches
HotS - Game that pretends to have a lore background but does not actually use it for anything, in stead we have short PvP matches
Overwatch - Game that pretends to have a lore background but does not actually use it for anything, in stead we have short PvP matches

See a trend? I guess many players are fine with games that simply pretend to have a story...but i am not. I'm still pissed whenever they release an OW cinematic because they are really, really awesome - some of the best game-cinematics i have seen - only to realise that these cinematcs have almost NOTHING to do with the actual game.

If OW had story-mode, i would play it. Put as a pure PvP-matchmaking platform i have absolutely zero interest in it. I tried to like Hearthstone+HotS - same problem.

As for WoW...if you enjoy MMORPGs there really is no alternative to WoW on the market. With titles like Rift on their death throes we might actually see some old playrs return to WoW....because where else should they go if they like the genre? FF14? Maybe, but FF14 is a completely different game. The pace is different, the style is different, the content is different. It's not just WoW with "more content" or whatever.

So i think WoW won't "die" anytime soon. I think they made some fundamental mistakes with the design of the expansion....but i still hope they are just preparing to abolish factions and that would remove most of the problems i have with it. BFA is the first expansion where you can really feel that Blizzard simply cannot create equal, meaningful content for 2 factions...what we end up with is one faction with "passable" content (=Horde) and one faction with F2P quality level of content (=Alliance). Neither of which is good enough. Quest lines like Xal'atath in 8.15 show the level Blizzard is capable of when they ditch the horrible faction-split and just concentrate on making good content. That's what they should do. It serves nobody to have two factions and both of them do not get the quality of content they deserve.

[Zorachus]

They should've made a true WoW 2 several years ago;

- Brand New next gen game engine, with Witcher 3 grade graphics.
- Create the new WoW based off everything they've learned on what worked and didn't work in WoW and build off that.
- Use state of the art A.I. ( Artificial Intelligence ) for smart NPC's and enemies that don't behave like dumb robots pacing back and forth, but actually more like living real people in the game.
- Get rid of all phasing and load screens in the game, bring back the true open world feel.

And then market the shit out of the game, and get all the Wrath era players back.


Or better yet, make WoD ( World of Diablo ). a more mature, darker themed WoW type MMO. That would be a huge success

[Zandalariprelate]

BfA sold more on day one, because you could preorder it for a much longer time than any expansion. They've also had a special event with a live Q&A for the reveal of the preorder AND you were able to unlock 4 new races right away if you preordered. Considering all that, I wouldn't call this a huge success that BfA just barely outsold Legion on day one.

Either way, day one sales don't matter this much. Blizzard makes the most money through subs.

Oh I see, yeah this expansion has take a toll in the playerbase, warfronts and Islands are worthless to do unless for gearing alts and very boring, the leveling experience is nice but I still WoD is still the best one for both factions. Also without tier set and gear inflation being exagerated this expansion doesn't help to keep the raiding population healthy

[Zorachus]

I thought Legion was a fantastic expansion, one of the best since Wrath.

So don't blame WoW hurting because it's 15 years old, blame BfA because it sucks balls.

[therealbowser]

Feels like a pretty knee-jerk reaction on Activision's part and doesn't bode well either way, but I doubt this is a sign of 'WoW dying' or such.

[Onikaroshi]

Feels like a pretty knee-jerk reaction on Activision's part and doesn't bode well either way, but I doubt this is a sign of 'WoW dying' or such.

Turns out it's probably a lot of, now defunct, Destiny support staff.

[bowchikabow]

Fair enough. I also don't play games on my mobile and very likely never will. But this is a great example of thinking what you do must apply to everyone (as tends to happen a lot here - together with people thinking any idea they have is genius and nobody ever had it before. In team with having no understanding of "the market" or having any clue how to design games or run a company with several thousand employees.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/...game-spending/

I never once that what I think must apply to everyone. What I am saying is, when you consider that ACTI all ready has king games in the mobile sector, and it is one of their largest profit makers. Why then, are they in such a situation where they need to restructure? I mean, if the market is going gangbusters.... Shouldn't they be able to just grow? Restructuring is specifically something that happens on defense.